Thursday, May 10, 2012

The experiences of Jane Swift, who truly gave birth while serving as a governor, highlight how false Sarah Palin's birth claims are

The utter absurdity of Sarah Palin's claim to have given birth
to Trig in April 2008 is highlighted by looking at what happened when a
governor really gave birth while in office – that is, when Jane Swift of
Massachusetts delivered twins on May 15, 2001.

OK, let's examine that. The first line quotes an official of
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, presumably an employee of the hospital
who prepared a press release and/or took press calls. How different this was
from Palin's alleged birth, in which the hospital where she claims she gave
birth, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, absolutely refuses to say a word ...
nada, zip ... about whether there was a birth, or even whether Palin was a
patient.

The next line quotes Dr. Schueler saying the governor is
"doing well." And who is Dr. Schueler? She was the BWH
obstetrician/gynecologist who delivered the baby – in other words, a maternity
specialist. Compare this to Palin's improbable claim that her personal
physician, a family doctor, delivered Trig, a premature special-needs
baby.

The next day, CNN carried a followup story, which said in part:

The first born, Lauren, experienced some minor breathing
problems and was taken to a special care nursery for observation.

"They expect her to be in there for about a day or so just
for some observation," said Swift's spokesman, Jason Kauppi.

So far as news reports show, Swift's twins had no disabilities
or special needs. Still, as we see in the quote, the medical staff, wanting to
make sure there were no problems, placed one of the twins in a special nursery
for a day. And if there had been a problem, BWH is a teaching hospital with a
top-rated neonatal ICU that could have handled virtually any emergency.

By contrast, Mat-Su Regional, a very small hospital, has no
neonatal ICU. So it would have been bizarre for Palin to
chose to give birth there. After all, Trig has Down syndrome, and Palin claimed
she was delivering a month early; surely a concerned mother would want adequate
facilities on hand to handle an emergency.

Moreover, Palin claimed she flew into Anchorage after her labor
started, and then drove nearly an hour more to reach Mat-Su Regional. Why would
she not save time and simply go Providence hospital in Anchorage, the largest
and best-equipped hospital in Alaska? After all, her family doctor, who
purportedly delivered Trig, has full privileges there.

The answer, of course, is Palin did not give birth that day. She
claimed she gave birth at Mat-Su Regional because, as a former board member
there, she was confident no one there would reveal she staged a hoax.

But back to Swift: three days after the birth, the hospital
released a statement to the press containing the following:

A week after being admitted to BWH for contractions, Acting
Governor Jane Swift underwent a Caesarean section to deliver twin girls Tuesday
evening.

During Swift’s five-day recovery at BWH, “she will do what most
new mothers do—fawn over her children,” said spokesman Jason Kauppi to a crowd
of reporters ...

So we see that Jane Swift was admitted to the hospital fully a
week before the birth, and that afterward she would stay in the hospital for
five more days. And how does that compare to the amazing Mrs. Palin?

Sarah, you will recall, claimed her water broke more than 20
hours before she went to the hospital, and that after her contractions started,
she boarded a plane and flew more than 3,000 miles from Texas to Alaska.
(Doesn't she make Swift look like a wimp!)

And how many days did Sarah allegedly spend in the hospital
recuperating after the alleged birth? Er ... how many hours? Well, there is no
real evidence she was there at all, but the official story has it that she left
the hospital the same same day she gave birth. So, five days recuperation for
Swift, and well under a day for Palin.

I could go on. But I think the above makes my point. Palin's
fake birth in no way resembled what we would expect if she, as governor, really
gave birth while in office. The hospital where she allegedly delivered will not
say a word about the birth; and her alleged time in and out of that hospital
was implausibly short. Palin's farfetched claims seem consistent only with a hoax;
they deviate enormously from what happened in the case of a governor, Jane
Swift, who truly gave birth while in office.